Object Description

This is an antique Victorian coromandel wood and ormolu strung four bottle decanter box, late 19th Century in date.

The interior lined in plush blue velvet, the hinged lid with four ormolu wine glass holders,the front is hinged to the sides with gilt ormolu hinges and locks and with an applied silvered lable for the renowned retailers The Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Company.

The four decanters of superb quality hobnail brilliant cut glass and in perfect condition as are the glasses.

This is a highly decorative piece which will make a statement wherever placed.

Condition:
In excellent condition, please see photos for confirmation.

Dimensions in cm:
Height 32 x Width 27.5 x Depth 27.5

Dimensions in inches:
Height 12.6 x Width 10.8 x Depth 10.8

The Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company.
The firm was established in 1880 by William Gibson and John Lawrence Langman.
The firm was active at 112 Regent Street, London acquiring the premises previously used by John Joseph Mechi.
In 1893 the firm absorbed The Goldsmiths’ Alliance Ltd and in 1898 became the Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Co Ltd being active as jewellers, dealers in diamonds and precious stones, silversmiths,electroplaters and watch and clock makers.
In 1952 Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Co Ltd was amalgamated with Garrard & Co Ltd.
The firm participated to a number of national and international exhibitions, as Indian and Colonial Exhibition (London, 1886), Paris (1889), Chicago (1893), California (1894), Paris (1900) and Franco-British Exhibition (London, 1908).
The Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Co was active with manufactories at Newcastle Place, Clerkenwell; Regent Works, Sheffield and Rue St George, Paris and as retailer of items supplied by various British gold and silver manufacturers (Martin Hall & Co Ltd, W&G Sissons, Wakely & Wheeler, William Comyns, Harrison Brothers & Howson, etc.)

Coromandel wood or Calamander wood
is a valuable wood from India, Sri Lanka and South East Asia. It is of a hazel-brown color, with black stripes (or the other way about), very heavy and hard. It is also known as Macassar Ebony or variegated ebony and is closely related to genuine ebony, but is obtained from different species in the same genus; one of these is Diospyros quaesita Thwaites, from Sri Lanka. The name Calamander comes from the local sinhalese name, ‘kalu-medhiriya’, which means dark chamber; referring to the characteristic ebony black wood.

Coromandel wood has been logged to extinction over the last 2 to 3 hundred years and is no longer available for new work in any quantity. Furniture in coromandel is so expensive and so well looked after that even recycling it is an unlikely source. A substitute, Macassar Ebony, has similar characteristics and to the untrained eye is nearly the same but it lacks the depth of colour seen in genuine Coromandel.